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Following several years of declining advertising sales, the Greenvile Times reorganized its advertising sales force. Before reorganization, the sales force was organized geographically, with some sales representatives concentrating on city-center businesses and others concentrating on different outlying regions. The reorganization attempted to increase the sales representatives' knowledge of clients' business by having each sales representative deal with only one type of industry or of retailing. After the reorganization, revenue from advertising sales increased.
In assessing whether the improvement in advertising sales can properly be attributed to the reorganization, it would be most helpful to find out which of the following?
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| Following several years of declining advertising sales, the Greenvile Times reorganized its advertising sales force. |
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| Before reorganization, the sales force was organized geographically, with some sales representatives concentrating on city-center businesses and others concentrating on different outlying regions. |
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| The reorganization attempted to increase the sales representatives' knowledge of clients' business by having each sales representative deal with only one type of industry or of retailing. |
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| After the reorganization, revenue from advertising sales increased. |
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The passage presents a sequence of events: declining sales led to reorganization, which was followed by improved sales. It moves from problem to solution to positive outcome.
There isn't actually a stated conclusion here - the passage just presents facts. The implied suggestion is that the reorganization caused the sales increase.
This is a correlation argument structure. We see reorganization happened, then sales improved, but there's no explicit claim that one caused the other - just the timing suggests it might have.
Evaluate - We need to find information that would help us determine whether the reorganization actually caused the increase in advertising sales, or if something else was responsible for the improvement.
The key claim is a causal relationship - that reorganizing from geographic territories to industry specialization caused the increase in ad revenue. We need to evaluate whether this cause-and-effect relationship is valid.
For evaluate questions, we need to think of assumptions underlying the argument and create scenarios that would either strengthen or weaken the conclusion when we get more information. The argument assumes the reorganization caused the sales increase, but we need to consider alternative explanations or factors that could support or undermine this causal claim.
This asks what proportion of total revenue comes from advertising sales. While this tells us how important ad sales are to the newspaper's overall business, it doesn't help us figure out whether the reorganization caused the sales increase. Knowing that ads represent 30% or 70% of revenue doesn't address alternative explanations for why sales went up after the reorganization.
This asks whether circulation increased substantially in the last two years. This is exactly what we need to evaluate the causal claim! If circulation jumped significantly during this period, that would provide a strong alternative explanation for why advertising sales increased - more readers make ad space more valuable, so advertisers pay more. If circulation stayed flat, it strengthens the case that reorganization caused the sales boost. This information directly helps us assess whether the reorganization deserves credit.
This asks which industry type accounts for the largest ad sales proportion. Knowing that restaurants represent 40% while banks represent 20% doesn't help us determine if the reorganization caused the overall increase. It just tells us about the current mix of advertisers, not what drove the sales improvement.
This asks if any clients have standing monthly orders for fixed advertising amounts. While interesting for understanding the business model, this doesn't help evaluate causation. Whether some clients have contracts doesn't tell us why total sales increased after reorganization.
This asks whether there are more retail or industrial business types among advertisers. Like choice C, this just describes the current advertiser mix without addressing what caused the sales increase. The ratio of business types doesn't help us evaluate whether reorganization or some other factor drove the revenue growth.